Lark! The Herald Angels Sing—In Stereo!

A few days ago, when I went to shelve my inscribed copy of Lark! The Herald Angels Sing, Donna Andrews’ latest Meg Langslow novel, I was surprised to see I already had another copy there. How in the world…?

Well, quickly I realized what had happened, but I decided to have fun with the extra copy, so I posted this challenge on Facebook:

It would take a little bit to explain why I have duplicate signed copies of Donna Andrews’ latest Christmas mystery. So in the spirit of the season, an odd giveaway! Come up with the best reason (not necessarily the *correct* one, btw) WHY I have two of them (by midnight Friday!) and I’ll send the extra to you for free—maybe even with a little revised personalization if I can get together with Donna! (And psst, Donna: no hints why I have both!)

I so much enjoyed the responses that friends offered. Below is a quick sampling of some favorites.

From Greg Herren:

To fulfill the ancient Mayan prophecy, written in glyphs in a forgotten pyramid somewhere in the jungles of the Yucatan: if someone buys two copies of Donna Andrews’ latest Christmas mystery in the year 2018, peace and prosperity and enormous success will come to that person.

From Richard Nanian:

You suspect she had been kidnapped and replaced by an imposter, so you had a second one signed to compare the handwriting.

From Dave Stroup:

During a high-energy particle physics experiment at the Large Hadron Collider, a mouse carrying a piece of cracker dropped it into the proton beam. The beam was deflected into the Earth’s core and split into multiple pathways that briefly opened small, book-sized windows into a parallel universe identical in almost all ways to ours. This occurred exactly as you were grabbing your original copy of the book, resulting in its “duplicate” taking it’s place. The scientists shut off the experiment and no other interactions with the parallel universe have been reported.

From Mark Baker:

You were time traveling again. You went back in time to when you were getting the books signed, but by reliving the moment, you discovered you had two copies when you arrived back in the present.

I know that getting Donna’s signature is the moment I’d travel back to if I were able to time travel.

From Wendy Watson:

I’m going with Occam’s razor here: the simplest answer is usually the right one. Clearly the second Art you’ve been growing in that vat in the basement has finally matured and is reading at grade level.

And the suggestion that maybe Donna had signed Alan Orloff’s copy to me sent both Alan and Donna double-checking to see if that’s what actually happened!

Really, everyone who responded showed great imagination and a great sense of fun. But the winner was Teresa Wilder for celebrating the Christmas spirit in a couple of ways:

You bought a copy while shopping with the Ghost of Christmas Future one night. Of course, you didn’t remember (since it hadn’t happened yet) when you hit the bookstore with the Ghost of Christmas Present the following night. Now the future has arrived–and you have 2 copies! Voila! (If I win, I’ll donate the copy I already have to our junior high library, and cherish the one autographed by you & Donna!)

Needless to say, generosity goes a long way in the holiday season.

As for the real story…

Because of my review work for various publications and for my own blogs over the years, publishers often send me copies of new releases. Donna and I are in a writing group together, and when each of us has a new publication, it’s become customary to give copies to the other members of the group. So when I got Donna’s newest in the mail—knowing I had a copy coming—I decided to give this extra to her for a giveaway of her own. But she said, “Why don’t I just sign this one to you and that’s one less I have to bring to our writing group later.”

You can see what happened next, of course.

Thanks to Donna for her own generosity and for playing along here—and for the fine book too, a joy as always.

Congrats again to Teresa. I hope that she enjoys her soon-to-be twice-inscribed copy of Donna’s latest—and that the library enjoys their copy too.

Happy holidays to all!

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